A model start for the new “Bayreuth Baroque” festival with a forgotten Porpora soap.
Bayreuth
tea, as we now know, is less recommended on Russian flights.
Sometimes the family table also holds surprises for the esophagus.
Ludwig the Pious is choking on a deadly ingredient, which clears the way - the brightly smiling grandma in the wheelchair is the first to understand it - for power struggles in the former empire of the great Karl.
Whereby: Ninth century, Carolingians, it doesn't matter.
Whether ruling dynasty or mafia, lust for power and murder always form the same fields of force with correspondingly bloody results.
So what is rolled up in the Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth is no re-spelling for historian nerds.
“Carlo il Calvo”, the forgotten opera by Nicola Porpora, premiered in Rome in 1738, becomes the Cuba clan, a black and humorous family portrait from the 1920s.
It is a small miracle that the five long hours even took place.
Max Emanuel Cencic, no longer just a countertenor, but also on the road as a director, producer of his own opera projects and company owner, is now also head of the festival.
Within walking distance of the Green Hill, he lifts the new “Bayreuth Baroque” festival, which aims to attract the international crowd of fans who struggle with the murmuring heavy metal of the city's saint Richard Wagner - or who need a balance.
With 500 listeners, Cencic had calculated that the incomprehensible Bavarian corona policy only allows 200. With a budget of 1.5 million euros, a third should actually come in via the tickets.
So not only the Porpora premiere, evenings with Jordi Savall or Joyce DiDonato or the concertante Vinci opera “Gismondo” run as a forced loss business in the first year of the festival.
The donors apparently want to step in, and rightly so.
This is what honor rescues look like, above all: This is how they sound.
Cencic as a virtuoso director
After the celebrated evening, hardly anyone understands why Porpora's “Carlo il Calvo” was no longer played.
The singing teacher and prolific writer created his arias as a tricky hybrid between vocal training and customization for stars of the time.
The basic rhythm of the piece is high, the instrumentation as clear as it is effective.
And yet the impression of mere fireworks never remains in this late Baroque era.
With Armonia Atenea, conductor George Petrou provides the right pulse.
Music is made bouncy instead of rough and sometimes even contestable.
As a director, Cencic is not only an accomplished figure worker.
With virtuosity he can create interlocking genre images of a family who hates and loves one another.
There is not only the designated staff: an armada of silent figures from servants to uncles, aunts and children appear.
Cencic is happy to stage parallel acts.
While a soloist at the front defolishes his emotional world with an aria, the next intrigue is hatched at the back.
This is where people meet who move one turn away from reality, but never end up in the caricature.
Giorgina Germanou (stage) and Maria Zorba (costumes) provide the opulent equipment.
From the dining room, the library and the palm patio, including Lottario's shiny blue vintage car.
Humor can Cencic, TV soap drama, and sometimes it gets serious: Carlo is not bald as the title says, but a boy with polio and leg braces.
Julia Lezhneva and Franco Fagioli sing and play their way into utopian spheres in the Seelenton duet between Gildippe and Adalgiso.
And a few hours before, Lottario experienced a never-ending short-term outing when he was ensnared and used for power politics by the muscular bodyguard Asprando.
Counter duel with a psychological study
The festival boss has reserved the Lottario for himself.
With a mustache, white hair and stick, Cencic struts through the scene as Friedrich Schoenfelder's revenant.
Not an ossified clan godfather, but a connoisseur, whether power or eroticism.
Even in his solo numbers, sung smoothly, with a muted bel canto sound and extremely cleverly arranged, Cencic shows who is the master of the margravial house.
Franco Fagioli starts under high pressure, Arien-Maloche can be heard.
It only becomes more balanced over time, and its expressive psychological study turns the performance into a counter-duel.
Bruno de Sá (Berardo) completes this as a soprano one vocal level higher, Suzanne Jerosme unpacks the vocal cutlery as the scheming Carlo mother Giuditta, but can also spray caustic coloratura.
Petr Nekoranec likes himself as the downright mean Asprando.
Julia Lezhneva as Gildippe initially drifts unbalanced towards the character soprano before she clears away with wild slalom rides through the arias and a final Charleston.
The evening ends as a dance party before heading back to the banquet table.
And Grandma's bright laugh marks the next victim.